


A Country You Forget

by goldfinch



Category: Red Riding (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Kidnapping, Murder, News Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3171968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinch/pseuds/goldfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it bleeds it leads. The lads back home had put a charming local spin on that when he started at the Post: if it bleeds it’s Leeds.</p><p>Well, bugger that. London's where he belongs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Country You Forget

It’s still his father’s car. Even after it’s Eddie’s it’s still his father’s car. His father’s handwriting on the insurance, his father’s tapes in the glovebox, his father’s cologne spicy and light in the air until Eddie leaves the door open bringing in groceries, and a brisk spring wind blows everything clean. 

His third day in London, he takes it to get washed and then gets the inside done too, leaning on the outside wall, facing the road, smoking while he waits. Kathryn's called him once already but he didn't pick up. Hasn't decided if he's going to. This could be a fresh start for him—last thing he needs is sentiment pulling him back north when it's the last place he wants to be. He’s always been too big for that place, too good. London’s where he belongs.

“Cheers, mate.” He slips the bloke a fiver for tip, then slides into the driver’s seat. The leather wrapping round the wheel is smooth under his hands, buffed to a shine and smelling of polish, but it doesn’t help. It still feels like his father’s. Still smells like his father’s cigarettes.

Well. He shoves the car into gear, tires squealing a little as he drives off. That’ll fade, with time.

 

 

 

 

It’s not as though he’s expecting to get front-page material his first day on the job. But he’s good. He knows he is. The old editor, the bloke before Bill Hadley, he’s the one who recommended Eddie to the Guardian, said he’d do well there, said he had a shot at greatness. It’s something Eddie’s been carrying round warm in his chest since the day he left Leeds, proof of what he’s known most of his life. So he’s quite understandably confused when, a month in, the Guardian’s editor assigns him the tube assault, one injured, some blind bloke, when there’s been a woman beat to death in Shepherd’s Bush.

“Sir?” He knocks lightly on the glass, leaning round the doorjamb. “Do you have a moment?”

“Mm. If you’re quick about it.” Bill wouldn’t have put away what he was doing—Eddie knows that from experience, but Ellis lays his papers aside, gives him his full attention. There’s a big window on one side of the office, presumably so Ellis can look out at them as they work, but the blinds are drawn. The sound isn’t muffled, though. He can hear people moving around, paper rustling, the ostentatious _clitter-clack-ding!_ of typewriters. The bloke who’d gotten the murder, Farley, was on the phone when Eddie came in, hawk-sharp face pulled into something pleasant for whoever was on the other line, and Eddie can just hear him over the other voices.

He shoulders the door half shut behind him, slips into the closest chair. “I only wondered—I mean, I’m here to do crime reporting, as I’m sure you’re aware, and back home I covered all the serious crimes—as a junior staff member, of course. I’m more than ready to step up here, sir. I mean, that _is_ why you hired me.”

Ellis looks at him, pushes down his glasses a little. He must be far-sighted. With his little round glasses, sunk between piles of paper, he looks a bit like a man hunting in some remote African plain. “You want to know why I gave the murder to Farley and you the tube assault.”

“Yes sir.”

“Well that’s easy—because you’ve been here less than a month, and he’s been here four years.”

“But—“

Ellis takes his glasses off. “I’ve read your articles, Mr. Dunford. I know you have some degree of talent. But you are still fairly green, and this is a different world than the one you’re used to, up north, where everybody knows everybody and everyone’s willing to talk. I took you on because I liked your boss, before he died, and because I thought I could make you into something. But you’re not going to get there overnight. So.” He reaches for his papers while Eddie works his jaw, indignant, “You do this assignment well, and next time maybe you’ll get something more interesting. Now get out there.”

Eddie nods, stands and strides about of the room, shuts the door a little harder than he needs to. Ellis’s not even right about the north. Up there no one talks, no one listens; writing an article about anything more serious than a theft is like pulling teeth and Eddie has fought his way to the top, but what has it gotten him, outside of Leeds? Fuck all, that’s what.

But he grabs his keys, grabs his suit jacket from the back of his chair, strides out of the room like he’s got something important to do, just to make people look up.

He finds the blind bloke at his listed address, without sunglasses, so Eddie can see the cloudy, outward-turning irises of his eyes. He tries not to look at them, and then realizes it doesn’t matter. The bloke won’t be able to tell either way. The story he - Johnny’s fine - tells is simple, short, tailored for the paper, as though he’s spent hours going over it in his head. Probably has, the poor bastard. This is his moment in the spotlight. But Eddie dutifully copies it all down; if nothing else it’ll make for a good laugh, later. Then he shakes the man’s hand with a half-hearted, limp-wristed grip, tells him with all the sincerity he can muster that he’s sorry for what happened to him and that he’s positive this article will help find the kids who assaulted him, rest assured. And then he leaves.

And drives straight out to Shepherd’s Bush, where that girl was beat to death last night.

He’d peeked at Farley’s notes before he left for his assignment, and there’d been a few addresses. None with names, but the house on Cloverdale is fairly nice-looking, one of those two-story townhouses that run narrow into a little yard at the back. A woman answers the door.

“Hi there, Miss….” He trails off hopefully, and she obliges:

“Farroway. My name’s Darcey. What do yeh want?” Her eyes are puffy but only a little red, like she’s been crying today but not particularly recently, though by the way she grabs suddenly for the doorframe that could likely change at any moment. She’s wearing one of those funny Japanese dresses, and carries the smell of smoke with her onto the porch.

“My name is Eddie Dunford, Miss Farroway; I work for the Guardian.”

“You’re here about Carol.” Her voice is mostly flat, but it hitches up at the end on the name like it hurts her throat to say it.

“That’s right. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“No that’s—that’s alright. Um, here. Come in.”

He steps into a darkened hallway, into the smell of old perfume and cigarette smoke. Under that, he can’t smell anything else. The walls are done in a wallpaper that doesn’t look her taste at all, blue tea roses and leaves; when she catches him looking, she smiles.

“Me parents picked it out.”

“You live with them?”

“With me mum. She’s at work now, though. Here, you want a cuppa? A fag?” Her voice—something about her voice. It sounds familiar, like she’s from up north, maybe even from the Yorkshire area. She sounds like his friends from home do, like his mum. Like his dad.

“Cuppa’d be lovely, cheers.”

She moves slowly, and then forgets his tea on the counter and lets it steep too long; he sips at it once, then pushes it carefully aside. “You ready?” he asks, and waits for her nod, for her to fold her hands in her lap and sit up straight and think whatever thoughts a girl thinks when about to be interviewed. She doesn’t fold her hands, or even straighten, though. Just sits staring at him with a vaguely desperate look in her eye. 

“Now, this’ll be on the record,” he tells her. “You understand what that means?”

“Means you can put it in your papers for the world to see. I know.”

For the world to see. He likes that. “That’s right Miss Farroway. Now, you knew Carol Burrel, is that right?”

She nods. She and Carol shared an flat when they first came to London, she says. Carol moved out a year later, but they kept in touch. As she speaks she’s also starting to cry, her voice getting ragged and hiccupy; he can understand her, but barely. Eddie wipes a hand over his face. Let’s try something new. “Look, love, hey. Where are you from?”

“Bradford,” she says, wiping at her eyes.

“Really?” He puts on a pleased expression, the way you do when you meet someone from your hometown. “I’m from Leeds, meself. Brammley.”

“I grew up in West Bowley. Nearer the motorway than the park, course, but.”

“Yeah? One of me mates actually used to live out there. I drank in that park a couple of times, weekends. Listen.” He glances down at his notes. There’s not much there but he can’t quite remember the date—“I wanted to ask yeh if yeh happened to see anything last night. Round eight?”

“That’s when someone—when she died. C-Carol. I—I saw—” And just like that the tears start up like he’d been afraid they would, and he can already tell she’s a messy crier, never mind her nice cheekbones.

“Hey,” he says, leaning close. This is something else he’s gotten good at, over the years: closeness, softness, a way of easing his voice into something that suggests without actually promising. “I need you to focus, alright? Can yeh do that for me? Tell me what yeh saw.”

The girl looks up at him, teary and unattractive, but something twists in her face like a fork of lightning and she opens her mouth, says, “It was ‘er boyfriend. He’s who killed ‘er.”

Eddie smiles.

 

 

 

 

The boyfriend, of course, isn’t taking phone calls, and although Eddie catches a glimpse of someone he assumes is him through the living room window when he swings by, he knows his luck won’t be any better in person. For one, there’s already a knot of journalists outside, and a police cruiser there to keep them back. Young white girl, good-looking, beat so bad you could hardly tell she was white or pretty until the morgue hosed all the blood off. Eddie’s not getting anywhere near the front door. And he doesn’t feel like hanging round here for hours either, if all he’s going to see is the boyfriend rushing through to his car with his head down, ignoring everyone. So, back to the office. Mr. Whatever-his-name-is not available for comment.

He writes the article at his desk, typewriter pulled at an angle so no one can see the print edging out over the level. 500 words. All the details from the police report, all the details Darcey Farroway shared with him. Witnesses are encouraged to phone the police with any details concerning the fatal attack on…

“Fuck.” He flips back through his notebook. If he gets this in before Farley, he can probably convince Ellis to run it. It’s good, it has facts and color, has both sides of the story as far as any reasonable person could have uncovered. Anyway reporting’s not really about the facts, is it? It’s about the story. It’s about how many papers you sell. If it bleeds it leads. The lads back home had put a charming local spin on that when he started at the Post: if it bleeds it’s Leeds.

But bugger that. London’s where he belongs.

“Miss Carol Burrel,” he reads, then slowly repeats, tapping it out. There. Done. He pulls the page from the typewriter with a satisfying _shhhrick_ , then heads toward Ellis’s office, a jaunty spring in his step, mouth curved into a smile. The room is the kind of stuffy it only gets in fall: they can’t open the windows because it’s too cold out, but it’s warm enough that everyone’s sweating coming in; he barely notices.

“Sir?”

“This isn’t the piece I asked for,” he says. Eddie can’t read his voice. It’s not hard, not soft, not even very surprised; he can’t tell what Ellis is feeling at all.

Careful.

“I know, sir. I took the liberty of going to talk to a couple of the sources myself and, well, it seemed the natural thing to type up a few of my thoughts afterward.

“A few of your thoughts.”

“Yes sir. If you’d like to run it, I completely understand; Farley hasn’t gotten his piece in yet, I know, and mine is really quite good—“

“And have you written the article you were, in fact, assigned?” Oh. He’s got no trouble reading _that_. He feels that in his chest, slick as a swallow of fear, hard and cool and edging into angry.

“It’ll take me five minutes, sir, it’s nothing. I’ll get on it right away. I just thought—“

“No. No, I don’t think you did think.” He drops the article with a brief flutter onto the desk, free hand reaching for his glasses. But he stops halfway, lays his hand back down. “This is not a freelance organization, Eddie; you are my employee. If you want to go haring off on your own you come to me first and you certainly don’t write _other_ reporters’ _sto_ ries. Did you really think I would accept this for publication?”

It’s—well. It’s not a surprise, but he can’t look too shame-faced. “I’d hoped, sir.” He leaves quietly, doesn’t yell or kick at anything, just wrenches his jacket free from the chair and imagines what Farley is doing now, who he’s talking to, the article that is taking shape in his head. It’s that article that will be on the front page tomorrow, not the one Eddie wrote, never mind that he wrote it first. Nevermind he wrote it better.

 

 

 

 

 

That night, fag in one hand and three fingers of whiskey in the other, he finally calls Kath. She hasn’t called since that first couple of times, but he knows she misses him; he can hear it in her voice when she answers. She’s the only one he can call to talk to besides his sister, but he and Juliet have a spectacularly rocky relationship, and they’re at a low point at the moment. Have been ever since he left for London. He might have called his mum, if he’d wanted to talk about anything else; she’s so fucking proud of him it’s embarrassing. So Kathryn it is.

She answers on the fourth ring. They go through the usual dance of how-are-things how-are-you and then Eddie listens to her breathing on the other end of the line and says, “Come to London for the weekend.”

There's a brief, surprised pause. "What? Why?”

It hurts. He likes her. Doesn’t love her, probably, but still it hurts because he didn't expect it. She's always been blunt, and it’s part of what makes her a good reporter, why she’s the only girl on the team back home, but it hurts.

He tries to keep it from his voice, isn’t sure if he succeeds. “Well I'm here, aren't I.“

“Oh Eddie. We talked about this. I’ve tried long-distance before. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now with you. I know you, Eddie Dunford. I know what you’re like. If you ever come back to Leeds, maybe, but—”

“You could have come south with me.” He says it without thinking and is surprised to find, after it’s said, that he means it. He can’t picture Kath in London, its clutter and noise, but he can picture her here, in his apartment, standing in front of him. Naked. Oh.

“Maybe I would have,” she says. “Except I wasn’t invited, was I? You just up and left, barely a word to anyone except your colleagues at work. And apparently I don’t even count as one of those because I had to find out from your _mo_ ther—”

“Kath, come on.”

She pauses, a heavy weight on the other end of the line. He can hear her breathing, but barely. “Look, I have to go, something’s coming through here. Call me later?”

“Yeah, sure.” He hangs up. He won’t call her. Not after that.

 

 

 

 

“Good job,” Ellis says early the next morning, throwing his arms wide across the desk. It looks like surrender but his voice is angry, sarcastic, bitter as a mouthful of cheap whiskey. “I don’t know what you said, but now she won’t talk to anyone but you, so. Congratulations, it’s yours.” It’s not the tone of voice Eddie’d been hoping for when Ellis called him into the office, but it is the result; he’ll take what he can get. He should be able to hear typewriters clacking away in the newsroom; he should be able to hear Farley, sunk in the other chair, biting at his thumbnail; he can’t hear anything. The keening joy in his head is too loud.

“Did you fuck her?” Farley asks, looking up with a nasty smile. “I bet you fucked her. You look the type to enjoy a quickie with a murder witness. Did you have her give you the story when you were in her?” He adopts a strained falsetto: “‘And then he hit her, and there was so much blood, and he just—kept—hitting—her—’”

“Jake,” Ellis says, “that’s enough. Leave, now. Both of you,” he says, harshly, when Eddie doesn’t move to go.

Instead he swallows, moves forward into the circle of light cast from the lamp on Ellis’s desk. If Ellis were his old boss he wouldn’t have to think of what to do in a situation like this because it never would have come up, but now every step is uncertain. But he can’t let anyone see him uncertain. That’s not the way you win. Contrite, yes, but not uncertain. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry, sir. It wasn’t my intention to step in over—”

“Oh, fuck off,” Ellis snaps, then pauses, drags a fast hand over his face. “Jesus. Sorry. But it’s not me you should be apologizing to anyway, is it? You might have got the story but you sure as hell aren’t making any friends here, kid. You can’t burn bridges you haven’t built yet.”

“I realize that.” Farley’s gone, now, but he could be hanging round just outside; it’s what Eddie would be doing. He lowers his voice. “I only wanted—I mean, this is a good story, sir, I can feel it. I want in and—I’ve read Farley’s work.” He leans in, lays his hands on the desk for the big finish, “To put it bluntly, sir, I care more about these people, these stories, than he does. I have the instinct for it, I’ve been told, and I do better research too.”

Ellis raises one dark eyebrow, and Eddie can’t tell if he buys it. “Well. I guess you’ve given yourself the chance to prove that, haven’t you. She won’t have anyone else.”

It’s a dismissal, but a light one, considering. Eddie grins. “Sir.” If he leaves right away he can probably get to some of those other contacts Farley wrote down; they’re his now, and the article is his, and this is the beginning. Maybe he’ll do a police reaction piece for the follow-up. Maybe he’ll tell them they’ve got the wrong suspect. He’s got a witness who saw the whole thing—granted, from a distance, and in the dark, but—it’s a wonder they haven’t gotten to her by now. After the story runs, he’ll convince her to go in.

“Dunford,” Ellis says as he’s leaving, “I still want a hundred words on that assault in the Tube.”

Eddie turns, sharply, on his heel. “Oh, why don’t you give it to Farley? He’s not got anything else on now, has he?”

“Eight o’clock. On my desk for the Monday edition. It’ll run same issue as this Shepherd’s Green bit.”

“Alright, alright.” Eddie flaps a dismissive hand, steps outside, clicks the door shut behind him. He takes a moment to just stand there, grinning, his whole body vibrating. Farley’s nowhere in sight.

 

 

 

 

The article runs that next morning, 500 words, front page but shunted down to the bottom half.

**OVERLOOKED WITNESS IN SHEPHERD’S BUSH MURDER?**

It causes a stir at Scotland Yard, he’s sure, to put it mildly. Ellis’s phone rings all morning, and just after tea he leans out of his office to tell Eddie to get out there and get a police response for the followup, due tonight, eight o’clock, as usual.

Eddie reaches for his coat.

The interior of his car still smells, faintly, of his father. Even the cleaning he did when he first arrived in London didn't entirely get rid of it. The cologne’s gone, but there’s a particular smell to the leather, especially in sunlight; there’s a certain smell to the worn carpet, the cigarette smoke sunk into everything that will always remind him of his childhood, of his sister digging her knee into his side, his mother leaning over the seat to hand him a juice box, his father in the driver’s seat singing along to whatever was on the radio. His parents have a new car now, which is why his father gave him this one. His father’s car. His father’s watch. His father’s eyes.

It’s raining when he gets to the police station. It won’t do much good, with the wind that’s kicked up along with it, but Eddie pulls his collar up, figuring it’s always better to try than not.

The Captain’s office looks a lot like Ellis’s, which doesn’t surprise him. An office is an office if it’s in London or Los Angeles—but Yao’s is significantly less cluttered. The man himself has a wide face and a voice like something dragged across a field in the dark, but his eyes are even, if a little cooler than Eddie would like, and he offers Eddie a drink once he’s shaken his hand, which he appreciates.

They sit.

“Escaped convict got a length of twine round my neck my eighth year on the force,” Yao says suddenly.

Eddie shakes his head. “Sorry, what?”

“My neck. You’re staring at it. That’s what the mark is from and, incidentally, why my voice sounds the way it does. Damaged the vocal cords.” He pauses, sips from his own mug: coffee, Eddie thinks, with whiskey from the bottle he’d offered Eddie a drink from, slipped from one of his desk drawers. “But of course that’s not what you’re here to talk about.”

“Ah, no. It’s the witness to the murder of Carol Burrel. Miss… um, shit. Sorry.” He glances at his notes. “Miss Darcey Farroway. She claims it was the boyfriend did it. Said she saw him do it, and then saw him running from the scene.”

“And straight to the nearest corner shop, where he dialed 999. We have the transcripts. And so, I believe, does your colleague, the journalist who came by yesterday.”

Farley. God damn it. “I don’t understand. So you’re just going to ignore her testimony?”

“No. We’re going to look into it. In particular, we’re going to look into it in conjunction with other witness testimonies.”

“And what’s everyone else saying?”

“It’s an ongoing investigation.”

“So you can’t say.”

“That’s right.”

Well fuck him. Eddie slouches back in the chair, meeting Yao’s cool, pale gaze across the desk. What good has this meeting done, then? He’s only gotten the usual police non-response, some rubbish about Farley keeping information from him which he’s definitely going to Ellis about. Other than that: nothing. A cold trail of rainwater runs down his neck under his shirt collar. He stands.

“Well. Thank you for your time, Captain.”

Yao nods, rising to shake his hand again. “Of course.” And then he pauses. “Your name’s Edward Dunford, my secretary said.”

Eddie’s in the middle of shrugging into his coat; it’s an awkward position to stop in, so he keeps going, brushes the water off as best he can once its on. “Eddie. Yeah.”

“Did you wrote an article about a Mr. John Sommersby a few days back?”

“Sorry?”

“He was assaulted on the tube. He’s called several times to check on the status of the investigation, and I understand he mentioned your name several times.”

Eddie blinks. “Did he.” He doesn’t know if he should be worried or not; Yao’s face is as professionally blank as it’s been since Eddie walked in.

“He seems to think he owes you some kind of debt. For writing about what happened. There’s been very little progress on the case, but he’s convinced that because of your article, any day now, someone will remember and come forward. He believes there should be a followup story.”

Eddie shrugs. “If my editor assigns it to me.”

Yao smiles; there are too many teeth. “Quite.”

The rain’s gotten worse when he runs out to his car. It’s the sort of rain you rarely see in London, but that drowns sheep and small children on a near monthly basis up north. Down here at least it’s not swamped pastures and the smell of sheep shit when the waters recede, just stranded cars on the worst streets, no crime because no one leaves the house. The best time for crime is a clear Friday or Saturday night, in summer, on a full moon if you can swing it. Fucking nut jobs.

He’s only home for a few minutes to grab an umbrella and trade his shoes in for Wellies, but the ringing phone catches him just as he’s hopping into the left boot. He clumps into the kitchen with the right on hooked over his fingertips, and folds the phone into his shoulder. “Hello?”

“Eddie, dear. I was expecting to have to leave a message.” It’s Mum, her voice easy and calm. Nothing wrong, then; this time of day, she’d have called him at work if something was the matter. Which means she’s just calling to check up on him, because she’s his mother, because she worries, because he hasn’t got anything better to do than listen to her talk about the neighbors and ask him when he’s coming to visit, or coming to stay. She’s proud of him, he knows that. But she also thinks the Yorkshire Post is good enough.

He steps into the other boot, grabs the phone properly in his other hand. “No Mum, I’m here. Only got a minute though; I’ve got to get back to the office.”

“Work?”

“Mm. Just had a meeting with one of the Captains at the Met, about a murder. Girl killed out in Shepherd’s Bush?” He grins. “Two months in and they’re already giving me the big stories.”

“Oh that’s wonderful, dear. You know, we’ve just had a girl disappear up near here, too, not long after you left? Terrible business, all of it. The parents are in a state, of course. Your friends from the paper are out everywhere. Someone even came by the house, that bloke with the mustache? He said they miss you, up at the Post.” She’s about to suggest he come back. Eddie can tell by the way her voice pauses, breathless, between that sentence and the next.

“Mum—“

“I know, I know. You’ve got to run. Shall I tell your father you said hello?”

He pauses, mouth still a little open. Well. People can always surprise you. “Sure.”

“Alright then. I’m glad your meeting went well, love. Ta.”

The whole thing with Yao is barely worth doing an article about, actually, but Eddie writes one anyway.

 

 

 

 

When Darcey Farroway opens the door, she nearly throws her arms round him. “You’re back!” she says, lurching out of the doorway to drag him inside. “The police won’t leave me alone, yeh know; I’ve had to go in three times to give me statement. Three! That article yeh wrote was brilliant, by the way. Yeh said all the important things.”

“Yeah, well.” He smiles, doesn’t even try to suppress it. This is how people should treat him; this is how Ellis and Farley and Captain Yao should treat him. This is what he wanted when he decided to become a journalist. “I just want to help, don’t I.” Into the same wallpapered hallway, blue tea flowers turning round him, over his head. This time the curtains in the kitchen are open, and the room is full of white winter sunlight, and it’s warm. He sits, flips his notebook open on the table.

“Cuppa?” Darcey asks. She’s already moving round the kitchen, pulling out two cups, two spoons, and he watches her for a moment, amused. She’s full of energy, but it’s probably one of those bizarre fits of cheerfulness you sometimes see in bereaved people, a sort of panicked elation, like the body’s thrown itself into reverse. Her voice is too high and she keeps looking at him like she’s afraid he’ll run.

“Cuppa’d be lovely,” he says, “cheers.”

This time she gives him the tea with the tea bag in it, so it steeps exactly as long as he likes it.

“Has something happened?” She slips in opposite with her own cup of tea and the whole half-liter milk carton.

“No, this is just to check in.” He sips at his tea. There’s a cat standing at the back door, looking in, silent and still as stone. It isn’t even blinking. “They haven’t said anything to you, then, about the investigation?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve been calling every day, yeh know, to ask? They won’t say anything, cept that they can’t say anything.” She laughs. Eddie tries not to hear how desperate she sounds, but then he rethinks that, and leans forward a bit over his tea, pitches his voice low and steady.

“Ongoing investigation, yeah. They gave me the same line. But, listen, how are you holding up?”

“Oh. Oh, yeh know. I just, is it normal, for them to call yeh in so much? I’ve given me statement three times now, and the last time they were. Well they weren’t too nice, were they.”

“How do you mean?”

“First time they had me in they gave me tea, with milk and sugar and everything. Nice tea, too. Didn’t do that this time. I had to sit in this tiny little room and go over everything again, like they hadn’t recorded the whole thing the first time round. How’s yer tea, by the way?”

“Ah, it’s lovely, cheers.” He takes a sugar cube from the bowl between them, stirring it slowly. It takes a while for it to dissolve, which gives him a while to think. Three times she’s been called in to give her statement. She’s obviously nervous about it, to mention it to him the way she did, without any prodding or leading except a soft voice and a concerned look. Did she tell them more than she told him, that first time? Did the boyfriend say something? There haven’t been any arrests, or any murmurs of future arrests; as far as he knows the police still think it’s some random bloke off the street. But then the police aren’t saying much of anything to anyone, so who knows.

“You’d tell me, right?” Darcey says. She leans forward over the table, over her tea; she smells like laundry soap and cigarettes. She smokes the same brand as his father, Eddie realizes suddenly, recognizing it, then wonders how he couldn’t have noticed it before. “If you thought there was something I should worry about?”

“Course. Course. Listen, can I get a fag, actually? I forgot my pack at home.”

“Sure.” She pulls them out of her purse on the counter, hands them over. “Yeh can smoke indoors if yeh like; I do. Me mum doesn’t mind.”

Same brand. Same blue label, same distinctive sweetness to it, unburnt. Eddie takes one between his lips and lights up, inhales. Exhales. It makes his throat close up, nearly makes him choke. He hasn’t a fag in a few days, that must be it. Darcey takes the box back with a shy, uncertain smile. “Cheers,” he says, and watches the smoke drift up over her face.

 

 

 

 

Ellis is already standing when he calls Eddie into the office.

“Your girl confessed.”

“Excuse me?”

He makes a vague gesture against his desk, sits down, some great plains beast too tired to go on. “She made her whole story up. Apparently they were looking at her as a suspect for a while, but then someone put together that, of all the witnesses they interviewed, not a single one saw a girl standing where she said she’d been standing. Seems she put together her version of what happened based on the aftermath, which she did see, and lucky guesses. They’re not charging her with anything more serious than obstructing an investigation, though. Captain Yao figures it’s their own fault, going after her so hard when she clearly wasn’t involved, when, his words, they should have known from the first bloody interview. But he’s blaming the idea of it on your stories.”

Eddie’s heart’s been sinking this entire time; by now it’s firmly lodged in his stomach. Of course they’re blaming it on him. They have to blame it on someone. He almost laughs, has to shove his knuckles between his teeth to keep from looking like a lunatic. And who’s going to get to write that story? Because it’s sure as hell not going to be him. He’ll be doing sideshow pieces for years now, maybe. Jesus fucking Christ on a stick.

He’ll have to change his name. Write under a pseudonym.

“I should have had you do more research, but—well, you were right. It made a good story. At least everything you wrote was true as far as you knew it: she allegedly—the witness claims—so on and so forth.” He’s a good bloke, Ellis, for all that he should have given Eddie his chance earlier. Maybe then none of this would have happened. Eddie nods, but Ellis keeps looking at him, not saying anything else, and then he sighs. “I can’t keep you on,” he says. “Not after all this.”

“I—what? Why?”

“Because for a while—not forever, but for a while, for long enough—people will doubt _ev_ erything you write, Eddie. Do you realize that? A newspaper can’t take that. You took this story in a direction it shouldn’t have gone because you were so eager for a break, and now people in London know your name. People at other newspapers here, they know your name.”

He opens his mouth, can’t quite get it to work. It feels like there’s something stuck down the back of his throat, keeping him silent: disbelief, maybe. Or denial. “Oh come on,” he finally manages. “If she’d said the same thing to Farley he would have written it just the way I did!”

“Or maybe he would have interviewed other witnesses, gotten the whole story, presented her side as one of many, the way you should have done, the way I should have in _sis_ ted you do—“ He cuts himself off, spinning and angry and breathing too hard. Eddie thinks he might blame himself as much as he blames Eddie, not that it does anyone any good. Ellis is still going to let him go.

He swallows, grabs at his tie. It doesn’t make Ellis look any more sympathetic when he says to start packing up his things.

 

 

 

 

 

The phone wakes him, a strident sound that drags him stumbling down the hall into the kitchen. It can’t be even six o’clock yet; the street outside is sunk in the voiceless dark of two, maybe three in the morning. No cars—no cats, even. All his things from work, piled haphazardly on the kitchen table, are the first things he sees when he gets there. “Mum?” He yawns. “Wait, what?” He has to have her say it a few times; the connection’s not great and she’s crying besides, long ragged sobs that sound like they’re coming from deep in her lungs, something dragged from her depths and crushed by the pressure of getting out. His father is dead. Heart attack. It happened a couple of hours ago but he only just ‘slipped away’, is how she puts it. It was his heart.

“Well of _course_ it was his heart,” Eddie snaps when she says it. There’s a queer ringing in his ears and he is suddenly awake and so, absurdly angry at everything, at Ellis, at Darcey Fucking Farroway, at the girl who died, at his father. “Always loading his toast with butter, wasn’t he, never exercising except to yell at the telly—“

“Eddie.”

“I just—it’s his own damn fault, isn’t it?” He slams the phone down, wrenches his face up into his palms. His father. And then—shit. He’d forgotten to ask when the funeral was. He rubs the sleep from his eyes, reaches for the alcohol in the cupboard over the sink. Two fingers of scotch. Two more fingers of scotch. Maybe he should bring out the little single-serving bottles of vodka he stole from all those hotels, do the job faster.

He doesn’t even have a proper liquor cabinet, really, just this. Nothing fancy. Maybe if he wasn’t being sacked, basically, he’d eventually have gotten a nice one; now he won’t be able to afford it. He won’t be able to join another paper in London after what happened, his name on all those front-page stories, and the irony of it is is that if he’d stuck with the shite two-bit hack jobs Ellis was assigning him when he first arrived, no one would have cared if he’d gotten it wrong. But the way this case spiraled out of control, the way Darcey made him feel, the way he’d fucking fallen for _ev_ ery _word_ she _said_ —and he still doesn’t even know why she lied. Was she in love with the dead girl? Or with the boyfriend, who’d spurned her? Did she just want someone to pay attention to her?

The night spins slowly out, unraveling into stars and car horns on the street, people committing crimes he can’t write about, or that no one would publish if he did. He stalks round the apartment drinking, listening to music. The Beatles, King Crimson, old teenage favourites.

“Ellis,” he says, hours later into the phone, tired and drunk and watching the sun come up over the rooftops, missing the north, missing how easy it was, how straightforward, how everyone knew his name, “can I make a suggestion?”

One last swallow. The alcohol burns, going down, like a snakebite.


End file.
